Google Photos – Can I get out?

https://rocketeer.be/blog/2015/05/google-photos/

by rubenv • 11 years ago

163 141 11 years ago

rocketeer.be

WWKong• 11 years ago

Like with all other Google services you should be able to get your data out using the takeout service.

andrenotgiant• 11 years ago

https://google.com/takeout - Yep, still has photos capabilities

taylorlapeyre• 11 years ago

The answer, as the author points out, is yes. You can get them out via Google Drive. The author also thinks that Google is doing something bad by compressing a large uncompressed RAW file to 2mb, but that's the tradeoff you get for asking for unlimited storage from the service.

Google clearly states that photos synced to Google Photos with unlimited storage get compressed a lot. On the other hand, if you pay Google for more Google Drive space and use Photos to sync your images there instead, there is no compression.

Ensorceled2• 11 years ago

I think he means bad in the sense of "8:1 compression means poor quality photos which shouldn't happen for a photo site" rather than bad in the sense of "google is doing something wrong, immoral or illegal".

chias• 11 years ago

It's hard not to get 8:1 compression when we're starting from a RAW file

rubenv4• 11 years ago

I've uploaded that RAW file with the "Original" (paid) setting. It's ok when downloading in the web app, it seems to be compressed in the Google Drive view.

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

I uninstalled Photos right after I installed it. Why? Because as soon as you install it and you open it, it starts to indiscriminately upload all of your photos to Google's servers.

Now, I get that this is supposed to be a "cloud service" and whatnot. But I'd prefer if it was very clear when I choose to upload them to the cloud, and I'd also prefer to pick and choose which photos go into the cloud by default. If people want to upload everything by default to Google's server, that should be an opt-in feature.

timothya3• 11 years ago

it starts to indiscriminately upload all of your photos

It only uploads your photos if you check the "Back up & sync" checkbox when you first start the app. If you uncheck that box, it won't upload anything. Don't spread FUD.

kuschku4• 11 years ago

And it’s still illegal in many countries to upload and process private data without explicit permission.

And, as previous cases showed, permissions granted through default-checked boxes, or permissions granted through fine print hidden in the ToS are legally not binding, meaning the uploading is considered a computer crime.

Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all of them.

TulliusCicero3• 11 years ago

Nah. Your average consumer wants backup to 'just work' without having to think about it. Having autobackup everything be the default option makes sense. Power users can always uncheck the backup option that is shown when you first start the app.

kuschku4• 11 years ago

And it’s still illegal in many countries to upload and process private data without explicit permission.

Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all of them.

davb8• 11 years ago

Actually, there is a setting in Google Photos (at least the web interface) which lets you choose between "High quality" and "Original" (Menu -> Settings).

"High quality" recompresses large files, but gives you unlimited storage space for these recompressed files.

"Original" doesn't recompress or alter the files at all, at the expense of using your Google Drive/Email/Storage space.

I'm not necessarily on board with auto photo backup (I don't completely trust it - some photos should just remain private), but I like that they give you this choice.

What I really (really) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in the menu and labelled "Delete local copy". I take a lot of throwaways while trying to get the right shot - deleting photos is an every-day part of my workflow (I delete more than I keep). This has now gone from one quick tap to three (there's a confirmation dialog when you finally click the delete button). This is a very frustrating change.

TulliusCicero3• 11 years ago

You can delete multiple photos simultaneously if you go to the main photo grid and make a selection (long press, then either drag or tap) and click the trash icon at the top.

davb8• 11 years ago

The trash icon doesn't show up anymore. When you select multiple photos you still have to go through the menu to select "Delete local copy".

Even if it did show up, I like to review the photos full-screen and flip back and forth, then delete. Having to remember which of 5 shots was the best and select the bad ones in thumbnail view would just be painful. I think mine is a fairly common workflow too, as I've heard a few people complain about the same thing.

rubenv4• 11 years ago

Author here: Note that I did select Original and it still seemed to compress the RAW file in Google Drive view. Single downloads do yield the original.

jervisfm• 11 years ago

Have you tried Google Takeout [1]? I understand that will let you download all your data.

[1] https://www.google.com/settings/takeout

saidajigumi• 11 years ago

What does "compressing" a RAW file even mean? Is the actual content in the smaller downloaded version in some other format (e.g. JPEG)? Or is it simply truncated, either due to a bug or else stripping the actual RAW data, leaving only an embedded JPEG image?

It seems implausible that anyone would consider it a good idea to reencode a RAW file as a matter of course. Transcode it to process and/or compress it? Sure. But what comes out the other end isn't usually a native RAW file. (native RAW -> DNG workflows don't count.) This assumes that such a thing is even possible: e.g. that all RAW formats they'll see permit an alternate compressed encoding. If they did, someone needs a good stern talking-to. Pretty much the last thing that anyone who uses RAW files would expect is a workflow that tampers with the files while still allegedly remaining in the native RAW format.

mvgoogler7• 11 years ago

Thanks for the article. I work on the photos team.

I will file bugs for the drive-sync issue and the issue with the large downloads failing and try to get some answers.

mvgoogler7• 11 years ago

Quick follow-up.

I can reproduce this on my own account.

I uploaded a raw (NEF) using desktop uploader using the "Original" setting. Downloading through the photos app returns the original NEF file.

Downloading via Drive returns a file with the original name ("Foo.NEF") that is actually a jpeg.

So this is clearly broken.

Bug filed. I will follow up when there is some kind of resolution.

timothya3• 11 years ago

What I really (really) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in the menu and labelled "Delete local copy".

Once you select one or more images, the delete button shows up in the toolbar. Just one tap. http://i.imgur.com/EH2M5iM.jpg

davb8• 11 years ago

That's the old Photos app. This doesn't happen on the latest build.

asdf992• 11 years ago

the cloud only exists because storage is cheap.

it should actually kill the cloud because storage is cheap. but all cloud providers go out of their way to make their platform painful to use without their cloud.

Apple makes backing up photos with iphoto annoying. Google makes backing up photos via an app much easier than via usb or rsync on your home network... etc

thrownaway24243• 11 years ago

Storage in terms of raw bytes really is dirt cheap, but storage in terms of erasure encoded, encrypted, multi-homed, highly-available file systems isn't. Just buying a hard drive isn't going to get you very far. The durability of a file on a cloud service is going to far outstrip that of your local hard drive or even a fancy NAS.

pgeorgi3• 11 years ago

Cloud services outliving my (not so fancy) NAS. So, where's my Webshots account? (since we're talking photos, let's take a photos example. It shouldn't be hard to find an example of a dead web service for any other kind of data, either)

_My_ datastore still exists and proudly provides those files from my redundantly stored, checksummed, auto-repairing local filesystem. No, I don't have an off-site backup. But neither had Webshots once they decided to shut down.

walterbell3• 11 years ago

A $500 Dell T20 Xeon has ECC memory for FreeBSD and ZFS, with room for four drives.

0x0• 11 years ago

Google's old desktop app "Picasa" is still my go-to for organizing photos. I make a file system folder for each "album". Everything stays local on the fs and there is no doubt about where the originals are (compared to iPhoto/Photos.app, etc etc). OSX' built-in Time Machine to an USB drive + rsync to a NAS takes care of multiple backups. I can easily drag&drop files into apps and upload forms with no doubt that I'm working on the best possible copy (original).

Too bad the app appears to have been going unmaintained for some time now. It doesn't even support retina displays on OSX (in a photo app!)

skynetv2• 11 years ago

Piacasa is the best, both native and the online version. I still use it but its a bit confusing now that it some how has the Google plusiness added to it online

pgrote2• 11 years ago

My concern at this point is Picasa being abandoned. It is the main hub in my photo processing process.

istvan__6• 11 years ago

Could not agree more. This is exactly how I backup my pictures too.

frik3• 11 years ago

On Windows the good old "Windows Live Photo Gallery" program that come with Vista (and is available for Win 7+ as download), is still a good alternative. The good thing it doesn't force one to use a database based album system. The photo files stay were the are, it only reads/extracts the metadata and optionally the user tags can be embedded back to the original file.

Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery

Download: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-galler...

Edit: the offline-installer is hidden on this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-i...

joosters• 11 years ago

Me too! I don't like it when programs insist on storing my photos in their own, non-human-readable directory structures and file names. Otherwise it becomes a nightmare trying to use them in other programs. Even iPhoto->Photos managed to break my library.

I just wish that Google would bring back the simple online photo sharing that they used to have with Picasa. The Google+ merge ruined all that.

gcr2• 11 years ago

If you're willing to keep your photos in Dropbox and have the space for it, take a look at Carousel.

Carousel respects whatever folder naming convention you have. All photos in your dropbox show up in Carousel's photo list.

Pictures on Carousel are always saved to the "Carousel" folder in your dropbox, but you can move them around to respect your preferred folder structure without damaging anything.

ytdht• 11 years ago

I really like digiKam myself

jbuzbee4• 11 years ago

Been playing with Google Photos this morning and marveling how it is able to categorize beer, bridges, kangaroos, koalas, etc. But of course it gets some wrong. Anyone know how to change a categorization?

jbuzbee4• 11 years ago

I just realized that this post makes me sound like an Aussie! I guess I should have thrown in that it also automatically recognizes bars, beaches, sunsets and sharks!

testrun• 11 years ago

still sounds like an Aussie.

jzting• 11 years ago

Not at the moment, but in the overflow menu there is an option to "Remove Results" where you can remove false positives from a set of results.

notatoad3• 11 years ago

There’s no way Google will know that “Trip to Thailand” should actually be labeled “Honeymoon”

i wonder how much longer this will be true.

whonut2• 11 years ago

The only place I can see it getting info like this is a social network, and that means G+...

In all seriousness, could they cross-reference dates in G+ posts and photos to see that you mentioned being on your honeymoon when it was taken? Seems like something they'd do if G+ was actually a thing people used.

icebraining• 11 years ago

There's the Google Search looking for good place to stay on a honeymoon, the email or hangout message sent to the SO mentioning it, the calendar event, etc.

Even just seeing that you're on an irregular stay in Thailand (which it got from your Android) right after your marriage can be telling.

walterbell3• 11 years ago

Other options are

  Gmail
  Calendar
  SMS
  "Now on Tap" can MiTM content of every Android app

notatoad3• 11 years ago

They've got most people's email and calendar, that's a lot more data than G+.

jbuzbee4• 11 years ago

I am seeing that it uses tags and faces that I previously put on photos within iPhoto and are evidently stored with Exif. So if you used iPhoto to tag your set "honeymoon" it will pick that up.

wstrange• 11 years ago

Or they can analyse the photo itself. They seem to be getting quite good at picking out faces, scenes, events, and locations in photos.

jbuzbee4• 11 years ago

In my photos, it recognizes both Weddings and Graduations. And you do combinations like searching for "Judi Graduation" or "Beer in Soho", "Jim at Yellowstone", etc. - amazing stuff!

Animats• 11 years ago

"Once the (download) selection is large enough, it silently fails."

"Mwahaha! Those sucker users will try a download and think they can get all their photos back. But they can't! They're ours now! Ours!"

Hey, it worked for Instagram.[1]

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right...

tedunangst2• 11 years ago

Did you bookmark that and post it without actually reading it? The update at the top, very first paragraph, makes it pretty clear it didn't work.

therealmarv2• 11 years ago

And do not even try to edit your local desktop photos (desktop uploader will not recognize at all) or try to delete local photos. Google photos only works OK if you ONLY use your mobile phone for taking photos. If you have an normal camera like e.g. a DSLR and want to sync that with Google photos: Forget it. You will only have a lot of more management work with Google photos. Google photos is again a dead end for your data. What we need is a good two way sync for the desktop and more management possibilities in Google photos (because there are NO management features). If you look at Lightroom and their cloud sync (if you have an Adobe Cloud subscription): Adobe is lightyears ahead in syncing. Google clearly does not care at all about the desktop.

therealmarv2• 11 years ago

Haha. So many downvotes? I wonder if anybody has a good solution which does not require 4-5 steps and two copies of an image to get photos on Google photos, edit them with Photoshop locally and resync that changes ;) with keeping my folder structure.

CHY872• 11 years ago

99% of people don't subsequently edit photos in photoshop; Google's tools are adequate. You're in the 1% who are power users, and so might find the mainstream solution inadequate. For that reason, software like Lightroom exists.

davidcgl• 11 years ago

I agree and I don't know why you get the downvotes.

A large majority of users [1] take photos with their phones, upload a select few on social media, maybe with some basic filters/edits, and forget about the rest.

Google Photos is designed for that use case, and not for the 1% power users.

[1] No data to back this up, just my two cents.

hueving• 11 years ago

Google used to be known for not aiming for the lowest common denominator. They've gotten so large and crafty though that apparently "works good enough to capture the majority" has replaced "make something great for everyone".

istvan__6• 11 years ago

Yes I think Lightroom started to offer online services a while back. I also use DSLR and the bandwidth is not there yet to upload it from a mobile. At the same time, an average user (99%) wants to take a picture with a mobile phone and upload it most of the time, that scenario is perfectly fine with Google.

tedunangst2• 11 years ago

Update: not quite, see below

Did I miss the update? All that's mentioned below is that Google drive offers different files. There's nothing more about the download link.

darklajid• 11 years ago

I'd guess that this is a reference to either

1) you have to do it one by one (or in very small batches), because the zip export is broken

2) you get a different view via Google Drive

(I don't use those service, cannot even begin to imagine why one would upload pictures to Google or use Google Drive, but - that's my take away from the article and my own interpretation)

cddotdotslash• 11 years ago

I don't understand all the outrage about Google compressing photos. They're offering a free service; they can do whatever they want to save space. If you don't want them to be compressed, use the fill size option and pay your share of storage.

rubenv4• 11 years ago

Note that all testing was done with the paid "Original" option.

I happily pay for things, but when I do I like to verify that it does what it says on the box.

istvan__6• 11 years ago

I have been using this for a while and one day I realized it is skipping some pictures when backing up. I went through all of my pictures and noticed ~5% is missing. This was the last day when I trusted Google with picture backups. On the other hand Flickr offers similar solution that actually does what it is supposed to.

mvgoogler7• 11 years ago

Is this happening with the new app that launched this week?

If you have concrete examples I could investigate.

zwetan3• 11 years ago

I have the same experience with videos

scenario: uploading a bunch of video files all named in the same pattern

when coming back to the google photo interface to put those files in the same group, searching their name does not return the full list, only part of it.

Only by searching "recently added" I can then find and add the missing files.

If I could ask for features:

- show the file name when you select an item

- allow to search file name by regex

istvan__6• 11 years ago

Haven't tried that yet, but I moved over to iOS so this is not relevant anymore, but thanks.

sorenjan• 11 years ago

I have an example from before the new version of the Photos app came out. This might have changed since then.

If I take a bunch of photos and then send some of them through Hangouts before I get home to my WiFi those photos doesn't get backed up. I'm guessing it's because Hangouts uses G+ albums for the photos, so technically the photos are on Google's servers, but they're not where I expect them to be (in Auto backup).

notatoad3• 11 years ago

Are you sure? I haven't used the new Google photos, but Google+ photos confused me for a while because it defaulted to displaying "highlights" instead of all photos, where they picked the best one or two out of any similar pictures in the same timeframe and hid the rest. My photos were all there, i just had to use the all photos view.

istvan__6• 11 years ago

Yes, I went through all of the settings, and it was weird because I set up backup all pictures from the very beginning. One thing, that is also happening on Android, after an upgrade the app loses some or all the settings.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9420455/android-applicati...

This sometimes can cause surprises (for example setting back to highlights from full backup, to your point).

In my case it was simply missing pictures. It was reported by multiple users as well, Google had a ticket about it.

weitzj• 11 years ago

Did anybody think of steganography, yet? Or will the compression brake it anyways?

zwetan3• 11 years ago

when I saw "unlimited free storage" I had to try :)

my interest was more on the video than the photo, when you click the option "High quality (free unlimited storage)" the help mention it goes as far as 1080P for videos which is fair game for something free.

So I uploaded a couple of 720P videos, and redownloaded them to compare if they were the same, what formats was supported, etc.

The good: it works kind of like a private Youtube, it does process the video so when you watch it online you end up having it to auto 360P, which sucks a little. But if when you redownload the video you get the original one (not recompressed).

The bad: the UI and file naming is a joke.

I understand they wanted to make it simple to use and organise a lot of photos and videos, but not being able to see the filename to quickly select a bunch of files and put them in a group (or collection) is beyond me.

But let focus on something even simpler: select an item and no file name ? I mean com'on google, am I not suppose to find/search easily trough my stuff ?

No regex in file name search either ...

My guess is the photo part was the main goal and the video part been added quickly without much of a thinking about it, I do hope it would get better.

So far disappointing, if I was to upload all my videos there, I could not organise them easily and worst I could not find them, it would be useless.

mynameisvlad2• 11 years ago

No regex in file name search either ...

I mean, come on, did you really expect this? Most consumer-oriented search systems I know of don't have this feature.

frik3• 11 years ago

He probably meant something like "*.jpg" which is common and works fine on Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX. And probably not the full Regex syntax as known from grep or Perl/PHP.

zwetan3• 11 years ago

for an image, not seeing the file name is OK as you can differentiate images by just looking at them

but for videos, sorry I need a way to differentiate them, and a thumbnail is not enough, I need a either the file name or a way to search more than plain keywords

UX for photos and videos can not be the same

rictic• 11 years ago

Sometimes when uploading a video to youtube it's initially made available only at low quality while it's being transcoded into all of the different formats for different clients and bandwidth rates. I'd recommend checking back in a day or so to see if the quality has improved.

7ewis• 11 years ago

So if you use Original, does it still use up your storage, even if the photo is under 16MP, or video under 1080P?

From what I have read, they compress the files when 'High Quality' is chosen, so I'm guessing if you select original, it all counts towards your storage?

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

I have my cellphone automatically back up pictures to both OneDrive and Google photos. Handy enough.

But, I like the OneDrive (or Dropbox if you don't mind the politics of Dropbox) model: keep all photos and videos in chronological order, edit file names, if desired, to add description after the file stamp, and generate one off share URI links for friends to share pictures.

That said I appreciate having the extra backups, even if lower resolution, on Google photos.

pbw• 11 years ago

I'm surprised the main timeline is a flat list. I have 30,000+ photos and sometimes have 300 photos of the same event. It's impossible to browse the overall contents with every photo shown.

I created a prototype[1] 5 years ago of a hierarchical timeline using timestamps. It had it's own problems, but I would have thought by now someone would have figured out a solution. Machine learn a hierarchy where each coarser level has a subset which reasonably summarizes the next more detailed level.

[1] - example http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/553914066...

flycaliguy• 11 years ago

I've never really treated my photos like special data that require an interface beyond my OS. I keep them in an encrypted folder on my backup drive, on my laptop and on my cloud service.

Maybe it's different if you have kids or something... but my folks only have about 60 photos of my entire youth and that's 40 too many.

jasonkostempski3• 11 years ago

Yes, it's different when you have kids. I don't give 1 shit about any photo my kid isn't in, but all photos he is in, regardless of quality, must be preserved FOR ALL ETERNITY!! I suspect that feeling is common among parents. That's why your parents have those 40 other pictures :)

jasonkostempski3• 11 years ago

After just a day of playing with it, I love the Google Photos service for what it is, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be a viable backup solution. If a service offers anything more than strictly "file backup", it's a sure thing you will lose quality and/or won't be able to get at it easily. I already have a good backup system utilizing my free $50/month Azure benefits that come with my MSDN subscription so I'm not really concerned about it. I personally don't care much about sharing features but if Google can actually make this a good backup + sharing system then they will win. For me "good" means my original files are kept as-is and that upload/download is relatively quick. I'm fine with days, not weeks. Azure (CloudBerry) took less than 5 hours for my 100GB library over 35Mbs upload FiOS, but Google Photos isn't even 1/10th of the way done after a day.

I love how it has mashed-up my photos into categories, stories, animations and collages. Literally love it, it IS great. But backup system, it is not.

sosuke• 11 years ago

Can you comment on your Azure based backup system? I have similar Azure credits.

jasonkostempski3• 11 years ago

It's not super automatic but CloudBerry Explorer for Azure [1] is free and has a pretty good folder sync feature. I basically just keep all my photos and videos in single a folder on my desktop. Whenever I copy my families phones or tablets to my PC I just run the saved sync, it's usually pretty quick. I have over 90 GB of stuff so it actually took a long time for CloudBerry to analyse the folder for the first time, after that it figures out what's new and needs to sync pretty fast.

[1] http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-explorer.a...

giancarlostoro• 11 years ago

It's sad when you have to backup things from the cloud and not to the cloud, it's sad when the cloud isn't straight forward about your files.

dk8996• 11 years ago

The one thing that screwed me over is that the Upload by default compresses the files to lower res. I lost some high-res photos this way.. this should not be a default setting.

carlosecpf• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, the "high quality" option is really low quality in reality. Images that are crisp and sharp becomes very blurry on Photos. Some 12Mpx pictures that I have got downscaled to 0.3Mpx on photos. However it does not happen to all photos... Some of them deserve the "high quality compression" badge. It just seems to be aleatory. Please fix this issue!

Google Photos – Can I get out?

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